When she stepped back into the crowd, she found herself besides Prince Cleo, dressed as he always was in his strange tunic. Did the man have no other clothes?

“So you befriend your enemy,” Cleo said. “How curious.”

“If we were friends, we would not need the gods to uphold our promises to each other,” Mydea said. “It is truce, nothing more.”

“Truce,” Cleo said, as if the very word was foul to his lips.

She raised a brow at him. “Do you not observe this in Pyria?”

“There is only victory or defeat for the Homoioi,” Cleo said. “To make peace before the outcome is settled is bereft of honor.”

Thank the gods we are not in Pyria then, she thought dryly. “I did not think you would be here tonight.”

Cleo grinned. “If your philosophers are to be believed, my gods and yours are one and the same, but with different names. Besides, I am here now. I may as well see for myself how you Syngians worship.”

“How are you finding it so far?” Mydea asked.

“Far too much gold,” Cleo said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “far too little the gift of blood. How can the gods be sated on just glittering things?”

“We do not give blood here carelessly,” Mydea said. “Much can be done to you if it should fall in the wrong hands.” Did he not know this?

“Of course, I am not suggesting you give your own,” Cleo said. “Give to the gods the blood of your helots.”

Mydea balked. “We have no slaves here. The Divine Syngian forbids it.”

Cleo frowned. “Helots are not slaves. Had I the will, I could neither free them, nor sell them. Only the polis may do that.”

“Regardless of what they are,” Mydea said, “the blood of others is not ours to give.”

“Yet, blood is necessary. How can those of an animal suffice for the gods? There is no potency in them,” Cleo said.

“Perhaps,” Mydea said, “but what is it to you if another gives their blood? What does it matter without meaning? All the power in the world, but without purpose.”

Cleo snorted. “You wish to speak of power and purpose? Very well. My father is one of the two Kings of Pyria. This land only has one Empress, so how does she decide what to do by herself?”

“Quickly,” she answered.

“How succinct,” Cleo said.

“That’s rather the point,” Mydea said. Who did not remember the delays of Arh-Khaine during the years of Syla the Stormsong?

“What if she decides poorly?” Cleo asked. “What if she makes war on the wrong people?”

“Then our enemies will die quickly,” Mydea said.

“To our enemies then.” Cleo raised an invisible cup in toast, with a mouthful of mockery. “May they die quickly.”

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The Sons of the Pyrian League, so it was said, were descended from Old Ilyos too, and looking at his brown skin, Mydea could see the resemblance between her and him. Yet, appearance seemed to be all their people shared now and appearance alone was not enough to bind a tribe together.

Mydea turned her eyes back to the center of the room where the Empress’ three daughters stood side-by-side. Princess Lille was tall, fair, and lovely in her knee-length gown of green and gold, like a flower in full bloom. Mirah was as she remembered, black and beautiful in a sheer bronze outfit with her hair braided, while Princess Bethany’s strapless red dress molded itself to her heart-shaped body, and was a match for either of her half-sisters.

Their brother Altan was off to the side, his heeled shoes elevating him above the gaggle of ladies surrounding him. Last and alone among the heirs of the House Imperial to be of Ilyosi stock was Prince Pelias, nephew to the Empress and recently turned twenty. Around him had gathered lords and ladies from the two great sea powers of the Empire—Nysia and the Haven.

But no one from the Deeplands, Mydea thought. Her fellow stoneborn kept to themselves for the most part it seemed, but was she to interpret this as remaining neutral still, or a commitment to the prince unpresent?

“Lady Mydea, join us for a moment if you will,” Prince-Consort Pythos called out, the wind weaving through the room to carry his words to her ear.

With him was an assembly of stoneborn women though she recognized none of the sigils displayed on their chests and arms.

“This is Lady Mydea of House Kolchis,” Pythos said to them. He turned to her. “These are the women who will swear oaths to me upon this twilight, or the daughters of those men.”

Soon-to-be oathsworn and their daughters … they would not be true ladies then from the ruling families, but were the lowest rungs of the stoneborn—mages-at-arms, unlanded knights, and select strawborn who’d graduated from the Thalassian Athenaeum. She had an inkling now of Lord Pytho’s scheme.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintances,” Mydea said, committing their faces to memory.

“It would be to your benefit to meet them,” Pythos said. “They and theirs will reside in Aelisium for the foreseeable future and one can never have too many friends.”

Mydea nodded. “I understand, Your Excellency.” His words now confirmed it. These were who he wished her to invite to her gathering with Tomas, for they had neither the pedigree or prestige to be wed to a house eminent, nevermind an imperial marriage. No one would think this a serious play for Prince Jaeson’s hand, but it would be enough to show that the House Imperial took the nobility of the Deeplands seriously.

When the personal oaths and offerings had been heard, Prince-Consort Pythos and all with him approached the altar. More onerous were oaths sworn on a holy day, and for that reason many who could wait, would wait to swear during one. The hystors brought out sacred artifacts said to hail from the Era of the Six Sorcerers—a silk shroud, a bronze sword, and a page made of papyrus encased in glass.

“Bear witness to our oaths, gods great and small,” the oathsworn candidates said. Each named themselves before the gods in line with the strictest formalities of a sacred oath. “We swear this of our own free will, in good faith and without deceit before the honorable stoneborn present, before Prince-Consort Pythos, Lord Advocate and blood kin to Lord Pleonexia. We swear this on the Silk Shroud of Sylvia the Settler, the Iron Sword of Symon Shieldwarden, and the Script of Syla Stormsong. We swear this on the offerings and libations to Ygeia, before all the gods great and small, and the Divine Syngian.”

Each of the oathsworn laid their hands before those holy artifacts as they invoked their weight. To be oathsworn was an honor, to be entrusted with the signature spell of a house, however weakened or incomplete.

Yet with such trust came terms.

“We swear this to Lord Pleonexia of the Pleonexus, Lord Eminent of the Deeplands, and Marshal of the Aigean and the Anarev,” they said. “We swear to keep his secrets and his counsel, and never shall we pass on what we have learned in his service.”

The most important passage in their oaths, though more terms would follow. Would an oath alone ensure all who came into their service would never betray them? Hardly. A leaked spell secret could be the ruin of even a house eminent, but such was why only the lowest of the stoneborn were ever chosen. Their families had not the power to resist Pleonexia, and all their kin might be destroyed utterly at the first sign of subterfuge.

Neither was it likely that they would learn all of Pleonexia’s secrets, and it would take a brilliant mind to reconstruct the entirety of the spell from the fragment gifted.

Other words passed from their lips … to bear arms in defense of him and his, to love who he loved and shun who he shunned, to be loyal and true, to observe homage against all persons.

Then, at last: “May this oath bind me to the death of days, or destroy me and mine if I should forswear.”

“Let it be so,” Mydea said. With that, these men and women were oathsworn, and may they die in glorious service, keeping his secrets.